So They Meet Again: Purdue’s Trey Kaufman-Renn vs. Miami’s Malik Reneau

ST. LOUIS — This is college basketball today: Everywhere you turn, there’s someone familiar, someone you might have played with or against, but now wearing a different uniform.

For Purdue on Sunday against Miami, that player is Hurricanes forward Malik Reneau, who faced the Boilermakers a half dozen times while at Indiana. Reneau transferred to Miami in his home state following IU’s coaching change.

(Miami also features guard Tre Donaldson, who was at Michigan last season and faced Purdue twice.)

Does it matter for teams preparing for NCAA Tournament opponents to have some baseline familiarity with their personnel? It can’t hurt.

“It can be an advantage in some ways, just knowing what each other is capable of,” Reneau said. “But at the end of the day, it’s about going out there, competing as hard as you can, and playing for the full 40 minutes. We’re both going to have tough finishes around the rim, so it’s about weathering that and continuing through the game.”

For Kaufman-Renn, it might matter more than most. His matchup with Reneau is the game’s single most pivotal one.

“Any time you’re familiar with a player, it helps, not just him, but guys like Tre Donaldson as well,” said Kaufman-Renn, who’s played his best basketball of the season in the postseason, averaging a team-high 17.2 points on 68.4-percent shooting, with 10 assists in five games against just three turnovers. “Having that experience against them gives you an edge, especially in a tournament setting like this. At this stage, most players have a pretty defined baseline to their game. Guys may evolve — maybe shoot it a little more or handle it more — but a lot of what they do is still consistent.”

The 6-foot-9, 240-pound Reneau is different than the player Purdue knows from having played both power forward and center at IU, same as Kaufman-Renn has at Purdue. He’s still a formidable post-up threat averaging a team-best 19 points on 55-percent shooting, but he’s also become the capable floor spacer he never was at Indiana. He shoots 36 percent on an average of roughly two attempts per game. Perhaps he will be more inclined to shoot vs. Purdue’s bigger frontcourt.

“Purdue has seen a lot of post-ups from me from my time at Indiana,” Reneau said. ‘But now, in this system, I’m moving around the perimeter more, setting more ball screens, and getting involved in actions in the pocket. They haven’t really seen me as a primary ball screener as much — more before it was isolation, where they could sit down and load up defensively. So it’ll be a different style.”

Reneau said he knows he’ll need to hold his ground on defense vs. Purdue’s top front-line scorer.

“He’s going to get to where he wants to get to,” Reneau said. “You’ve got to be able to wall up and not give him any angles. Make him play over the top of you.”